SSC North America Reclaims World's Fastest Production Car Record

Actually, SSC had the Guinness World Record dropped back in their lap.

The Ultimate Aero, as shown above, recorded an average speed of 256.14 mph on a public highway in Washington State in 2007, to officially capture the Guinness World Record.

SSC Founder Jerod Shelby says, "This wasn't how we planned to reclaim the record. But it will do until the Tuatara takes a run at several records that exist out there. Although, it was still a nice surprise". Bugatti and their Veyron Super Sport were officially stripped of the record by Guinness World Records. "Guinness World Records announced that it is stripping the Bugatti's title after discovering that the car used to set the record time of 267.8 mph had been modified, which is a violation of the rules," indicates Benjamin Preston with The New York Times.

The infraction, according to Chuck Tannert, at Road and Track Magazine, is: The record-breaking Veyron did not qualify as a production car because a speed restrictor fitted to each of the 30 customer cars, had been deactivated on the world-record car.

"After we held the record for 3 years, I was happy to hand over the crown to Bugatti back in 2010. I think it's good for the supercar industry to have competition. It keeps the enthusiast hungry. We've also always felt that it would be better to break someone else's record next time, instead of just re-breaking our own record."

The "top speed" record came with a stigma... Enthusiasts felt that the whole engineering focus must have been directed at achieving that one top speed feat. We found it difficult to get people to see around our top speed record and recognize all the other engineering feats produced by the SSC team, such as ride quality, passenger comfort, record braking handling, braking, and driver predictability. SSC has its sights set on the one-lap record at Nurburgring to showcase the engineering prowess of the SSC Tuatara.